Stafford Beer

__Stafford Beer__ (born __Anthony Stafford Beer__, 25 September 1926 – 23 August 2002) was a British theorist, consultant and professor at the Manchester Business School. He is best known for his work in the fields of operational research and management cybernetics - wikipedia

YOUTUBE e_bXlEvygHg Video realizado en la Universidad de Manchester por Stafford Beer luego del golpe militar de Chile en 1973. El video explica los fundamentos y objetivos inconclusos del Project Cybersyn. Fue exhibido por primera vez en el contexto de la instalación www.multinde-metagame.cl, gracias a la colaboración del Sr. Raul Espejo.

# Management cybernetics

According to Jackson (2000) "Beer was the first to apply cybernetics to management, defining cybernetics as the ''science of effective organization''". In the 1960s and early 1970s "Beer was a prolific writer and an influential practitioner" in management cybernetics.

Sketch for a cybernetic factory, 1959Stafford Beer, ''Cybernetic and Management'', English Universities Press, p. 150. - wikimedia.org

It was during that period that he developed the viable system model, to diagnose the faults in any existing organizational system. In that time Jay Wright Forrester invented systems dynamics, which "held out the promise that the behavior of whole systems could be represented and understood through modeling the dynamical feedback process going on within them" - wikipedia

# Cybersyn During the presidency of Salvador Allende, in the early 1970s, Beer was closely involved with a visionary project, Cybersyn, to apply his cybernetic theories in government.

Information from the field would be fed into statistical modeling software (Cyberstride) that would monitor production indicators (such as raw material supplies or high rates of worker absenteeism) in real time, and alert the workers in the first case, and in abnormal situations also the central government, if those parameters fell outside acceptable ranges - 99percentinvisible.org

# Viable System Model

The Viable System Model (VSM) is a model (abstract) of the organisational structure of any viable or autonomous system. A viable system is any system organised in such a way as to meet the demands of surviving in the changing environment.

Principal functions of the Viable System Model, 1975. - wikimedia.org

One of the prime features of systems that survive is that they are adaptable. The VSM expresses a model for a viable system, which is an abstracted cybernetic description that is applicable to any organisation that is a viable system and capable of autonomy - wikipedia

# POSIWID

Stafford Beer coined and frequently used the term POSIWID (the purpose of a system is what it does) to refer to the commonly observed phenomenon that the de facto purpose of a system is often at odds with its official purpose.

Beer coined the term POSIWID and used it many times in public addresses. Perhaps most forcefully in his address to the University of Valladolid, Spain in October 2001, he said "According to the cybernetician the purpose of a system is what it does.

This is a basic dictum. It stands for bald fact, which makes a better starting point in seeking understanding than the familiar attributions of good intention, prejudices about expectations, moral judgment or sheer ignorance of circumstances." - wikipedia

# Sections